, because now I have not a sentiment that
can interfere with the dispassionate soundness of my counsels. I repeat,
you cannot now marry Lilian Ashleigh; I cannot take my daughter to visit
her; I cannot destroy the social laws that I myself have set in my petty
kingdom."

"Be it as you will. I have pleaded for her while she is still Lilian
Ashleigh. I plead for no one to whom I have once given my name. Before
the woman whom I have taken from the altar, I can place, as a shield
sufficient, my strong breast of man. Who has so deep an interest in
Lilian's purity as I have? Who is so fitted to know the exact truth
of every whisper against her? Yet when I, whom you admit to have some
reputation for shrewd intelligence,--I, who tracked her way,--I, who
restored her to her home,--when I, Allen Fenwick, am so assured of her
inviolable innocence in thought as in deed, that I trust my honour to
her keeping,--surely, surely, I confute the scandal which you yourself
do not believe, though you refuse to reject and to annul it?"

"Do not deceive yourself, Allen Fenwick," said she, still standing
beside me, her countenance now hard and stern. "Look where I stand, I am
the World! The World, not as satirists depreciate, or as optimists extol
its immutable properties, its all-persuasive authority. I am the World!
And my voice is the World's voice when it thus warns you. Should you
make this marriage, your dignity of character and position would be
gone! If you look only to lucre and professional success, possibly they
may not ultimately suffer. You have skill, which men need; their need
may still draw patients to your door and pour guineas into your purse.
But you have the pride, as well as the birth of a gentleman, and the
wounds to that pride will be hourly chafed and never healed. Your strong
breast of man has no shelter to the frail name of woman. The World, in
its health, will look down on your wife, though its sick may look up
to you. This is not all. The World, in its gentlest mood of indulgence,
will say compassionately, 'Poor man! how weak, and how deceived! What an
unfortunate marriage!' But the World is not often indulgent,--it looks
most to the motives most seen on the surface. And the World will more
frequently say, 'No; much too clever a man to be duped! Miss Ashleigh
had money. A good match to the man who liked gold better than honour.'"

I sprang to my feet, with difficulty suppressing my rage; and,
remembering it was a